WIC. It's both a financial boon to businesses like ours, and a complete pain in the ass. For those not familiar, WIC is a federal program, administered by the states, designed to provide nutritional assistance to pregnant women and/or to their young children. Unlike food stamps which you can spend on pretty much anything the government considers to be "food", WIC vouchers can only be used to buy specific staples according to the individual needs of the recipient - stuff like milk, eggs, cereal, peanut butter, baby food, and so on. As part of the Store's contract with the state that allows us to take WIC vouchers, we have to agree that we'll always have certain products in stock that most WIC users will need. We are not, however, required to carry everything that's WIC-eligible - and that's where this tale begins.
I was working the dairy last night, and I was on the outside of the aisle, organizing stuff in the door, when a woman carrying some WIC checks walks up to me, and we have the following exchange:
SC: Do you carry quarts of lactose-free milk?
Me: No, I'm afraid I don't.
SC: Oh, so you're violating your WIC contract then. This is the tenth store I've been to that's been breaking the law! You're required to carry everything that's on WIC. I can call up the news and go to the state and you're going to lose your WIC contract and lose your job! (walks away)
I shrug and go back to my business.
About an hour later, I caught up with the front end lead, who told me that the same woman had angrily confronted her and gone on the same rant about costing us our jobs. As it happens, however, we keep a copy of the WIC handbook in the front end podium, and she brought it out, turned to the page that lists what products we're required to carry, and - surprise! - we're not required to carry quarts of lactose-free milk. I wish I could've been there to see her reaction when she indignantly walked away to get checked out.
We all know that customers like to quote "the law" at us all the time. (Just the other day I had a customer inform me that we were going to get fined $100,000 if we didn't install chip-card readers by tomorrow, and a few years back I had a woman tell me she was going to get us shut down because we moved the charging station for our electric scooters.) It's rare, though, that the opportunity actually presents itself for us to show them that no, they're wrong and they're not the legal eagles they think they are.
I was working the dairy last night, and I was on the outside of the aisle, organizing stuff in the door, when a woman carrying some WIC checks walks up to me, and we have the following exchange:
SC: Do you carry quarts of lactose-free milk?
Me: No, I'm afraid I don't.
SC: Oh, so you're violating your WIC contract then. This is the tenth store I've been to that's been breaking the law! You're required to carry everything that's on WIC. I can call up the news and go to the state and you're going to lose your WIC contract and lose your job! (walks away)
I shrug and go back to my business.
About an hour later, I caught up with the front end lead, who told me that the same woman had angrily confronted her and gone on the same rant about costing us our jobs. As it happens, however, we keep a copy of the WIC handbook in the front end podium, and she brought it out, turned to the page that lists what products we're required to carry, and - surprise! - we're not required to carry quarts of lactose-free milk. I wish I could've been there to see her reaction when she indignantly walked away to get checked out.
We all know that customers like to quote "the law" at us all the time. (Just the other day I had a customer inform me that we were going to get fined $100,000 if we didn't install chip-card readers by tomorrow, and a few years back I had a woman tell me she was going to get us shut down because we moved the charging station for our electric scooters.) It's rare, though, that the opportunity actually presents itself for us to show them that no, they're wrong and they're not the legal eagles they think they are.
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